History

@Lucius_Gellius @DimitriTilloi @Archeonationale @museesgallo @RAeliusVictor @RomanBinchester https://t.co/Duj5ttPlGl

— T S P (@morangles) March 11, 2024

 

An Insight

International Women's Day where elite women go on TV or write op-eds and ordinary women clock into their nine-to-fives reminds me of when Trump was elected and elite students and profs stayed at home and cried while custodial staff still came in to mop floors and clean gutters.

— Rob Henderson (@robkhenderson) March 8, 2024

 

If we do not penalize false statements made in error, we open up the way for false statements by intention.

From Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers.  Page 373.  A discussion which seems strangely pertinent to our current academia where DEI appointees plagiarize like it is going out of fashion and 70% or more of research papers in some fields fail to replicate.  

“I’ve no objection to scientific pot-boilers,” said Miss Edwards. “I mean, a popular book isn’t necessarily unscientific.”

“So long,” said Wimsey, “as it doesn’t falsify the facts. But it might be a different kind of thing. To take a concrete instance-somebody wrote a novel called The Search-”

      

“C. P. Snow,” said Miss Burrows. “It’s funny you should mention that. It was the book that the-”

     

“I know,” said Peter. “That’s possibly why it was in my mind.”

 

“I never read the book,” said the Warden.

“Oh, I did,” said the Dean. “It’s about a man who starts out to be a scientist and gets on very well till, just as he’s going to be appointed to an important executive post, he finds he’s made a careless error in a scientific paper. He didn’t check his assistant’s results, or something. Somebody finds out, and he doesn’t get the job. So he decides he doesn’t really care about science after all.”

“Obviously not,” said Miss Edwards. “He only cared about the post.”

“But,” said Miss Chilperic, “if it was only a mistake-”

“The point about it,” said Wimsey, “is what an elderly scientist says to him. He tells “him: ‘The only ethical principle which has made science possible is that the truth shall be told all the time. If we do not penalize false statements made in error, we open up the way for false statements by intention. And a false statement of fact, made deliberately, is the most serious crime a scientist can commit.’ Words to that effect. I may not be quoting quite correctly.”

“Well, that’s true, of course. Nothing could possibly excuse deliberate falsification.”

“There’s no sense in deliberate falsification, anyhow,” said the Bursar. “What could anybody gain by it?”

“It has been done”, said Miss Hillyard, “frequently. To get the better of an argument. Or out of ambition.”

“Ambition to be what?” cried Miss Lydgate. “What satisfaction could one possibly get out of a reputation one knew one didn’t deserve? It would be horrible.”

      

Her innocent indignation upset everybody’s gravity.

Academia, in its treatment of Claudine Gray and others of her ilk, are demonstrating plagiarism and data falsification are no longer the sins they once were and that the pursuit of Truth is no longer the mission of academia.  Committing the right sins, or committing them in the name of the right cause, will get you appointments rather than dismissal.  

I see wonderful things

Once every few years, the Namibian desert experiences what is known as the Sandhof lily bloom.

The lily bulbs sit in the clay beneath the desert floor, waiting patiently for years some centimers of rainfall.pic.twitter.com/S8IkuSiLID

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) March 9, 2024

 

Offbeat Humor

we just lived through an astonishingly unethical psychology experiment that had a very low pass rate.

our societal substrate recoils at this knowledge because too many were too complicit for too long.

they want to forget.

but we need to remember or this will happen again. https://t.co/Of88DpAlPl pic.twitter.com/qEsTFrpKXz

— el gato malo (@boriquagato) March 11, 2024

 

Data Talks

Wharton statistician looks at Hamas’ casualty data and concludes they are likely falsifying to maintain a rolling mean & linear growth — and they don’t know how to avoid making anomalies obvious to Western analysts

Women:Children R2=0.017
Men:Women is *negative* with R2 = 0.835 pic.twitter.com/ZD7JxmXMxI

— Max Meyer (@mualphaxi) March 10, 2024

 

Ruins Of The Roman Theatre At Taormina, Sicily by William Stanley Haseltine (American, 1835 – 1900)

Ruins Of The Roman Theatre At Taormina, Sicily by William Stanley Haseltine (American, 1835 – 1900)

Click to enlarge.

If she bid them, they will go barefoot to Jerusalem

From Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers.  Page 343.

“Harriet rang up the Mitre before breakfast.

      

“Peter, could you possibly come round this morning instead of at six o’clock?”

“Within five minutes, when and where you will. ‘If she bid them, they will go barefoot to Jerusalem, to the great Cham’s court, to the East Indies, to fetch her a bird to wear in her hat.’ Has anything happened?”

“Nothing alarming; a little evidence in situ. But you may finish the bacon and eggs.”

“I will be at the Jowett Walk Lodge in half an hour.”

The allusion, "If she bid them," is from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton.  

History

Sofonisba Anguissola ~ whom van Dyck described as “the miraculous painter from life” ~ creates her own self-portrait by painting her tutor Bernadino Campi painting a portrait of her (1559) pic.twitter.com/LN27Vq7KEG

— Journal of Art in Society (@artinsociety) March 11, 2024

 

An Insight

But there is one power that will **always** be greater than govt and that is reality. The role of govt should be to align with reality, to become maximally truth seeking for its own sake, otherwise spurned reality will destroy it. Nemesis always follows Hubris.

— wretchardthecat (@wretchardthecat) March 6, 2024